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Every architectural element,
every most fantastic emblem it embodied, was associated, for them, with
some cherished feature of their religion. Its erection had been enjoined
upon them as a most sacred duty: they were proud of the honor it
conferred upon their city, when it grew up in its splendor to become the
chief object of the admiration of strangers upon the upper Mississippi.
Besides, they had built it as a labor of love; they could count up to
half a million the value of their tithings and freewill offerings laid
upon it. Hardly a Mormon woman had not given up to it some trinket or
pin-money; the poorest Mormon man had at least served the tenth part of
his year on its walls; and the coarsest artisan could turn to it with
something of the ennobling attachment an artist has for his own
creation.
Therefore, though their enemies drove on them ruthlessly, they succeeded
in parrying the last sword-thrust, till they had completed even the
gilding of the angel and trumpet on the summit of its lofty spire.


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